Life Expectancy

• Compared to White babies, more than twice as many Black babies die before their first birthday (National Center for Health Statistics, 1999).
  
  
• Black American men are the group with the lowest life expectancy (Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, 2000).
  
  
• Black women are less likely than White women to survive breast cancer, and Black men with prostate cancer die at twice the rate of White men with the disease (Alliance for Health Reform, 2000).
  
  
• Black Americans die from heart disease, cancer and stroke at higher rates than any other racial group (Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, 2000).
  
  
• The life expectancy of Whites exceeds that of Black Americans at every income level (Rockefeller Foundation, 2001).
  
  Children’s Health
  
  
• More than 1 out of 7 Black children living in older housing have elevated blood-lead levels (Children’s Defense Fund, 2001),
  
  
• Black children are 6 times more likely to die from asthma than White children (Department of Health and Human Services, 1999).
  
  Teen Health
  
  
• The overall teen birth rate has dropped for several years. The largest drop has been among Black teens (more than 26 % between 1991 and 1998) (National Center for Health Statistics, 1999).
  
  
• Among high school seniors, smoking rates are and lowest among Blacks (about 15%) and highest among Whites (36.5 %) (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1998).
  
  Chronic Diseases
  
  
• Blacks are 79% more likely than Whites to live with diabetes (Alliance for Health Reform, 2000).
  
  
• Black and Hispanic women are about 20 % of all women in the US, but they are 77 % of the new HIV/AIDS cases (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1998).
  
  Health Care
  
  
• Black men and women receive less care when they are hospitalized, regardless of their doctor’s race (New York Times, May 10, 2001).
  
  
• Black Americans are hospitalized for asthma three times more frequently than other U.S. residents (National Institutes of Health, 2001).
  
  
• Black Americans are more likely to receive misdiagnoses of schizophrenia and less likely to receive accurate diagnoses of depression or other mood disorders (New York Times, August 27, 2001).
  
  Insurance Coverage
  
  
• One in five Black Americans does not have health insurance (U.S. Census Bureau, 2000).
  
  
• 2.4 million Black children (one out of five) are uninsured, compared with 1 out of 9 White children (Children’s Defense Fund, 2000). NBUF